diff --git a/esphome/py_compat.py b/esphome/py_compat.py
index 53c38fbb24..6833a55801 100644
--- a/esphome/py_compat.py
+++ b/esphome/py_compat.py
@@ -78,8 +78,12 @@ def indexbytes(buf, i):
 if IS_PY2:
     def decode_text(data, encoding='utf-8', errors='strict'):
         # type: (str, str, str) -> unicode
+        if isinstance(data, unicode):
+            return data
         return unicode(data, encoding=encoding, errors=errors)
 else:
     def decode_text(data, encoding='utf-8', errors='strict'):
         # type: (bytes, str, str) -> str
+        if isinstance(data, str):
+            return data
         return data.decode(encoding=encoding, errors=errors)